New forecast warns that 30% of AI-displaced employees will need to be rehired
Experts are saying that 30% of employees replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) tools will be rehired by 2029 – and that this "AI rebound" will likely be at a greater cost.
Gartner is predicting that this rebound will be due to employers struggling to align workforce decisions with their evolving business needs.
"Many organisations are making AI and workforce decisions in the wrong order," said Caitlyn McDonough, vice president analyst in the Gartner HR practice.
"They decide how many people to let go before they understand what it will take to get work done."
AI has been one of the most cited reasons for layoffs this year, and has been the leading factor in the United States. Data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed that AI has been cited for more than 120,000 job cuts in the US, approximately 21% of all cuts made this year alone.
But the reports of job cuts come with emerging cases of AI-replaced employees getting rehired. A recent study from Careerminds revealed that 32.7% of organisations that conducted AI-led layoffs had already rehired between 25% to 50% of the roles they initially let go.
Another 35.6% said they had already rehired more than half of the roles they cut.
Rehiring will be at a greater cost
But rehiring employees who were replaced by AI will come at a greater cost, according to Gartner, a warning supported by recent findings from SHL.
SHL's Talent Mobility at Work in 2026, which polled more than 2,000 adults in the US and the UK, found that most AI-replaced workers are willing to come back but not on the same terms.
More than half (51%) of AI-replaced employees would want a substantial pay increase before returning, according to the findings.
At least four in 10 workers also want full transparency about AI's use in their role in the future (40%), as well as specific guarantees about their future job security (42%).
SHL dubbed the trend of rehiring AI-replaced staff "AI rebounding," which it said is an "early warning" for HR leaders.
"AI rebounding is what happens when a company automates a role before it has genuinely assessed the human capability inside it," said Lucy Beaumont, global senior vice president of product and design at SHL.
"The AI doesn't deliver, the gap becomes obvious, and the business ends up rehiring the same experts they just let go of, at a far greater cost."
What employers get wrong about AI layoffs
Beaumont pointed out that underneath the AI rebounding trend is a "much bigger visibility problem."
"Most organisations don't have a reliable, objective gauge on what their workforce can do. Without that, AI adoption decisions become guesswork, which is expensive and erodes trust when it means exiting and then re-hiring the same expertise," she said.
"Getting people decisions right is about using genuine data-driven insight into human capability, so the choices about what aspects of work to automate, and what to protect, are grounded in reliable talent intelligence rather than assumption."
Gartner has introduced a new framework designed to help employers avoid prematurely letting go of employees due to AI.
The framework, according to Gartner, considers enterprise strategy first and aligns workforce decisions to achieve its goals. Its five planning phases are:
- Identify the workforce capabilities most critical to executing business strategy
- Forecast future work demand and capacity requirements
- Assess future workforce supply, including both human and AI-enabled capacity
- Quantify workforce gaps and evaluate potential solutions based on cost, risk and speed
- Establish governance to prioritise and fund workforce investments
Gartner noted that a key factor in this framework is the forecast for future work demand, which can help organisations understand what work will be done in the future, how much of it, and the share of work that will be performed by humans and AI.
"To prepare for an AI-driven future, leaders should stop planning for the workforce they have and start planning for the workforce their strategy requires," said McDonough.
"When organisations shift the focus from jobs to work and work demand, they avoid costly workforce missteps and allocate resources more effectively."
